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Originally Posted by 107barney  The three points you make pstinard could apply to meat or any food source in general, could they not? In response to each point I will say this:
1. Antibiotics can contaminate feed lots, period. This means that the meat, the bone, or the byproducts of the animals could be contaminated just as the meat and bone meal could. So finding a product w/o meal doesn't eliminate this first point of contention.
2. As you correctly point out, dogs with true food allergy are rare, with less than 10% of dogs having a true food allergy. Those rare dogs are usually placed on food elimination trials with home cooked ingredients or foods that are marketed for this issue. Since most dogs have food intolerance and not allergy, using a more restricted product that is OTC may indeed resolve the symptoms.
3. Mad cow disease. This gets back to the whole feed lot problem, and the food system as a whole. Eliminating bone meal from the mix doesn't address this larger problem nor eliminate its risks. I personally try to avoid eating CAFO animals but it's not always possible to do.
Since I believe I had heard that you are a corn geneticist by training, and not a veterinary nutritionist, I will be looking for your thoughts on GMO corn. I don't eat corn, but my dogs do, and I think it is a quality ingredient for them. They find it palatable especially with a little butter on it mixed with their meats.
As for Rebecca Remillard, she has gone over and beyond for me and my dogs....in fact, she is consulting on a case right now for my Teddy and is not charging me for the additional advice or dietary recommendations. She has done the same for other dogs here who were not at all doing well and she found solutions where other specialists could not. So she has earned my trust and I have the utmost respect for her. It will be a sad day for veterinary medicine and pet owners when she retires but she will definitely have left her mark on me and I could never thank her enough for her dedication and skills that saved the life of my dog Daisy. |
Point (1) Well yes, to a certain degree, but animals of unknown provenance are more likely to be problematic. Take the recent example of horse meat cropping up in food for human consumption. Besides the issues of truth in labeling, the problem isn't with horse meat per se, it's with using euthanized animals that may have been shot up with pain killers or other medicines before they died. I would love to try horse meat, but I wouldn't want to eat Secretariat.
We're in agreement on point 2.
And basically we're in agreement on point 3
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And I would indeed trust Dr. Remillard when it comes to specialized diets. If you haven't read her article on home cooking that I linked to, inbox me with your email address and I'll send you the PDF--it's a great article! I was just puzzled by her apparent support for the use of unnamed meat sources. That may be a misunderstanding on my part, so I'll wait to see if she writes back.
Okay, now about GMO corn. Yes, you remembered right, I'm a corn geneticist by profession
. Non-GMO corn is a good food ingredient for animals that aren't allergic to it. GMO corn is okay to eat currently, but it could add some additional allergens since it contains new proteins that didn't previously exist in corn. Probably not a major issue, but it could be for a few animals. It's theoretically possible to engineer a corn that would be more toxic to consume, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to slip it past regulatory agencies. Still, it's a good idea for the public to be aware of what traits are being engineered into the corn that they are eating, in the unlikely event of problems down the line. As for me, I haven't gone out of my way to eat non-GMO corn yet, or to take it out of my pets' food.